Navigating Guilt: An Examination of the Phenomenon of Guilt in Jerry Pinto’s Em and the Big Hoom

Abstract

Guilt is a recurring undercurrent in Jerry Pinto's Em and the Big Hoom. This moving story explores the daily realities of a family which is dealing with mental illness and struggling with the complex and frequently debilitating sensation of guilt. A psychological crisis in a family and the concomitant emotional and mental conundrums eventuate in an insulated existence with parochial concerns as an inevitable outcome of it. The precarious existence that a family is forced to live, engulfed in the quagmire along with the victim and encumbered by the impairing depressive episodes, is the subject of this paper. Drawing on ideas like survivor's guilt, maladaptive guilt, and the inherited emotional burdens within dysfunctional family systems, the intricacies of emotional inheritance and self-blame are examined through Pinto's candid depiction of a family dominated by the mother's bipolar illness and the father's silent fortitude.